How y’all doin’! Greetings from Texas, the bible buckle, land of oil, where everything is bigger – especially the portion sizes!
As for the weather, you can follow that with the permanent link to it I’ve got on the right side but sufficed to say it’s finally not boiling hot out! We have the windows open and I’m not sweating. Maybe by American thankgiving we’ll need to wear windbreakers or something. One thing I told Karin I really miss is seeing the leaves come down in Algonquin. Other than that, ha ha ha from balmy Texas.
I am really enjoying being in school again. I’m not enjoying being punished by it but I enjoy the parts of my brain that are lighting up again that really should never have slept. I am also enjoying the concepts that I have really never encountered or focused on, such as how to dig into the Word of God and see things I didn’t know were there, by means of the simple tools of observation and interpretation that we are learning. I mean simple. Stuff a first year college student could grasp outright, and anyone could with somewhat more tutoring.
And the eye is ever on the future; on us being able to reproduce this for laymen we encounter everywhere. So seriously do they take this that Dr. Hendricks (84 years young) warned us that if we fail in our duty to teach our people in the future how to read and study the Bible, he’ll track us down and straighten us out – and he’s literally done it! If you know the man, he means it out of the most tender, sincere love for us and more so for God and His Word to be known among who we meet. More top evangelists that can communicate really well, in demand for speaking, writing, etc. came straight out of Hendricks classes, including Dr. Erwin Lutzer of Moody Bible church who I will mention below. It’s nice not just to know, but to have 58 years of track record from one teacher, that when DTS is done with us we’ll be the best of the best at what we do, by God’s grace!
Interesting tidbit: Dr. Hendricks was good friends with Jim Elliot, who died trying to evangelize a tribe when they speared him and his four colleagues to death. The amazing part of the story: all of the missionary’s surviving wives moved in with the very same tribe and brought them the gospel of Jesus Christ! This story was most recently made into “The End of the Spear” narrated by Steve Saint, the son of one of the men killed (movie review found here: http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0002501.cfm)
As you can see on danphoto on the right, I went to a real Texas ranch (and dairy) in Stephenville! Karin was going to come but then she started a class that meets Saturdays (see below) so I had to go on my own. Friendship Partners is a group that orchestrates the meeting of foreign students with students from (north) America for the purpose of making friends. I hadn’t really thought of this, but the majority of foreign students in America never enter the home of an American during their entire program. We know what that felt like when we lived in Korea. So, Friendship Partners asks 10 DTS students to help host 90 foreign students from a number of different universities on a ranch near Stephenville, 2 1/2 hours from Dallas. We had a great time and I met people from as “close” as California and as far as Nepal. The Koreans loved me! We shot guns, fished, rode horses and had a campfire. On Sunday we had church in a honky-tonk opry house (50 person church with 105 guests = need new church building!) and then we toured DeVries’ dairy. Yes, we came all the way to Texas and we find a dutchman named DeVries running 1200 head on a dairy farm. Small world.
We also got involved with Friendship on a related activity: friendship buddies. Karin and I signed up to be friends with a Chinese couple studying at UTD here in town. We met them and are going to be their ‘American’ friends and hang out with them and be pen pals and stuff like that. The nice thing is that I get out of my tests and papers for world missions for this. Another bonus of DTS is the mission department – they place so much importance on incarnational mission that they provide great help for us to get out the door and making friends right away!
Speaking of friends, after one month of being here, we are making friendly with a really great couple from Sweden. We have gone to the symphony with them once, hung out at a restaurant, played board games and had them for dinner. Although I remain worried that both Karin and myself will make friends that will really help us grow, God is providing in the meantime, and for being here only one month and not having a church yet, we are not doing too badly. I met with my spiritual formation (SF) group today and these guys are turning out to be a really great group of guys. We meet to pray together and work through a cirriculum designed to bring to full expression who we are in Christ and how to put that to use. John from SF has invited us over to his house for dinner next week, just for a good time and so that Karin can meet John’s wife, since right now only the men have seen each other.
One struggle that we are having is that Karin has not found work yet. She does not like to be in neutral. We have worked on a bunch of angles. Her most promising idea is to get a sewing machine and find a legal way to sell stuff she makes with it. We just don’t know how to get the sewing machine. We are also waiting on any openings in the embassy. Karin is now auditing two classes: my world mission class and a linguistics class. The linguistics is to prime her for possible pro level english teaching when we return to Canada. The mission class is to prime her for being married to me. She is really enjoying it and I am VERY happy, because it speeds up any discussion on a future involving missions about 1000 times since we can talk assuming the knowledge of that class. In the meantime Karin is reading some of my textbooks and has a book list from SWIM group to keep her thinking. She also does all the chores which I really appreciate because I take so long to study!
Although my days do not feel any bit empty, I do not have a job either. I watched as all the on campus positions were filled before my eyes. I even had chaplain Bill helping me in food services one day, to look for the boss. You are not allowed to go to department bosses to beg for work (you must hand your resume to campus HR and they pass it on) but we were doing it anyway and it’s not the chaplain’s job either. Jobs occasionally open up during the semester, but my best chance is next semester. So, needless to say, we have a number of people here praying for our financial needs and keeping their ears open. I’ve got one well positioned lady ready to tell me about any job postings before they hit the campus job board. Other than that we are leaving it in the hands of God (once again, see Dr. Erwin Lutzer below)
Thanks to Luke’s ministry online we are slowly finishing furnishing our house and our wardrobes for free. And thanks to Luke’s closet grocery bills stay lower. We continue to look for a church, having gone to three two weeks ago and two last week. We will find our way before too long.
It’s time for me to get to my systematic theology paper but before I let you go, I just want to leave you with a link to our chapel speaker this week. (http://www.dts.edu/media/chapel/ Two of the messages are up and the rest will be soon ) We have a lecture series at this time every year, so all week we heard from Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Church in Chicago. He is a regular on three radio programs, on 700 radio stations around the world, and has written a big bunch of books on various subjects for the popular audience. I got the opportunity to sit down with him for a half hour yesterday and ask a few deep questions. I think he deserves his reputation. He gave four messages dealing with suffering and unanswered prayer. I was left moved and challenged to cast my biggest burdens at the feet of the cross, where God is in charge and He is doing something about our finances, our marriages, our sicknesses and the rest of the crazy world we live in. Read and study Habakkuk (short book!) for a good primer before you listen!
As Chuck Swindoll has challenged me and so I challenge you, “For one who has died has been set free from sin.” (Romans 6:7) We are freed from sin, and now it’s time to live that way!
Until next time!
Love,
Dan and Karin Van Minnen
